The decline of Arsenal FC

[Santi]

He was loyal to his employer. The people that were paying his wages. He didn't think it was appropriate to criticise them publicly.

There's nothing wrong with that. And there's nothing wrong with wanting to remain as manager of a club you love.

But he was complicit. It's OK saying "he didn't want to criticise his employers in public" - but he didn't do it in private either. Worse, he was publicly supportive, and judging by his actions, one can only assume he was supportive in private too. Well, until him and Gazidis came to logger heads anyway.

One can only assume that because you want to. You have no idea what went on behind the scenes so why pick only the narrative that suits your agenda?

Like I said, let the hate go.

[Santi]

Can’t be arsed, you’ll be one of the sad sacks celebrating when this guy dies.

He gave everything to us and in the end it didn’t work out, now it’s even worse. Let the hate go.

Not even worth replying to this.

And yet you did

Hope he gives you warning so you can schedule a party you sad sack.

[Phil71]

He was loyal to his employer. The people that were paying his wages. He didn't think it was appropriate to criticise them publicly.

There's nothing wrong with that. And there's nothing wrong with wanting to remain as manager of a club you love.

But he was complicit. It's OK saying "he didn't want to criticise his employers in public" - but he didn't do it in private either. Worse, he was publicly supportive, and judging by his actions, one can only assume he was supportive in private too. Well, until him and Gazidis came to logger heads anyway.

You don't know what he did in private. None of us do.

And even if he didn't criticise them in private I'd suggest it was because he believed he was still the one to bring Arsenal FC footballing success, and didn't want to jeopardise his position.

When all of that Wenger out stuff was going on this was the sort of nonsense that pissed me off. That he was somehow sponging off the club or was conspiring with the owners and the board against the fans. It was and is still now utter bollocks.

[Santi]

He was loyal to his employer. The people that were paying his wages. He didn't think it was appropriate to criticise them publicly.

There's nothing wrong with that. And there's nothing wrong with wanting to remain as manager of a club you love.

But he was complicit. It's OK saying "he didn't want to criticise his employers in public" - but he didn't do it in private either. Worse, he was publicly supportive, and judging by his actions, one can only assume he was supportive in private too. Well, until him and Gazidis came to logger heads anyway.

You don't know what he did in private. None of us do.

And even if he didn't criticise them in private I'd suggest it was because he believed he was still the one to bring Arsenal FC footballing success, and didn't want to jeopardise his position.

When all of that Wenger out stuff was going on this was the sort of nonsense that pissed me off. That he was somehow sponging off the club or was conspiring with the owners and the board against the fans. It was and is still now utter bollocks.

Exactly, good post Phil.

Some of the trash that went on when he was on his way out was pathetic. I understood people being emotional at the time and more angry than they really should’ve been, but it still went too far and the people holding resentment to this day are beyond my understanding tbh.

[Luzh 22]

You're right Phil. I can't be 100% certain. What I can be certain of, is there is a lot more evidence to suggest his was supportive than vice versa. That's all any of us can go by.

[Arsenal Tone]

I think Wenger sold the self-sustainability model to the board after the invincibles season and the board fully bought into it. How could Wenger then criticise them for it.

I've mentioned this before but when Abramovic first started pumping money into Chelsea I saw an article in the financial section of a newspaper when people were wondering what Abramovic's motives were. The journalist had found himself sat on a table with Wenger at a charity dinner and asked Wenger if it was possible to make money out of football.

Wenger's response was yes, by developing youngsters and selling them when they reached their peak and then bringing through the next bunch of youngsters. He supposedly gave examples of clubs in the Netherlands who were doing this successfully.

I really wish I'd kept a copy of the article and have searched for it online with no success.

[theHotHead]

One thing people also fail to consider is Wenger did as well as the wage bill. When we and Man U had the highest wage bills we finished top 2. When Chelsea had a higher wage bill than us, we finished top 3. When Man City came into the party and took over highest wage bills we finished top 4.

That is a fact. Then Liverpool overtook us in the wage bill list and we began finishing top 5. Our placing in the league table has almost always been directly linked to where we are with our wage bill. The narrative though is that Wenger did something remarkable, no be didn't, he did what the wage bill dictated. Luckily for us the top 4 gained CL qualification for most of our barren spell, well we had the 4th highest wage bill for a while so it made sense that we would qualify.

[Angelito]

I bet Forest and Rovers fans are thinking they’ll bounce back too. But it’s never inevitable. Nobody has a divine right to be at the top. We were for many years because footballing professionals ran the club. But we then got a businessman owner who came to make money and surrounded himself with charlatans. Turns out he’s good at inheriting money, not making it.

Don’t Forest and Blackburn us off
There moments in the sun were the exception
Not what they were
Forest because they had an outstanding manager
Blackburn because they had a rich benefactor pouring money into his hometown club

Forrest manager stayed far to long and in the end did the inevitable for anyone at the top, went backwards.
Arsenal have in effect done the same with the AW reign.
Once you start seeing a whole club comfortably accepting decline its past the change time

Oh yes
Clough was kept on too long
As was wenger
But Forest were a provincial club made good by clough
Arsenal are an institution
I am not for a second suggesting we are too big to fail and the complacency and settling for less in the last few years has been alarming
But it is not comparable with Blackburn and Forest

Wenger was kept for too long?

Too long for what?

That we finish out of Europe, become a mid-table joke?

10 trophies, 20 years in the UCL, 22 years in Europe, and we kept him past his expiry date? So that we could finish mid-table?

Each passing season reveals how Wenger was papering over the cracks. We're 10th right now. Is that because we kept Wenger for too long?

Invincibles. Two doubles. Most successful manager in FA Cup history. A new stadium. First Arsenal manager to take us to the UCL final.

Too long for what?

Arteta to become Mr Solution?

Give me a break.

You lot cannot get over Wenger. It's as if Wenger owned/owns Arsenal for you folks. It's become a habit: blame Wenger for everything, absolve the owner, absolve the existing manager, current structure.

Yeah, too long. The audacity to disrespect our greatest manager ever when his successors have been nothing but colossal failures. When the owner has no clue how to manage a European club.

You guys should be ashamed of yourselves. The club is at its worst point since before the Wenger years and here we are, blaming Wenger.

Unbelievable.

Ang I mostly agree with the things you write but I cannot agree with this. Whilst being midtable isn't down to Wenger our fall from grace is ENTIRELY his doing. Don't forget, Wenger took us into the EL, that happened under his watch, he also eroded squad quality until it was down to just fumes! We just had two even worse managers after him incapable of arresting the slide, that isn't on him but everything else is.

We'll have to agree to disagree on this, HH.

I can't buy the notion that we fell from being title winners to a top-4 side to a EL side because of Wenger. In fact, his best work for us was from 2003-14. By the summer preceding the Invincibles season, we were already cash-stripped due to the stadium move.

It's not like Wenger was bored of winning trophies or reaching European finals, and decided—one morning—that top-4 was enough. The stadium move screwed us up royally. After Dein left, we didn't have a figurehead and the Kroenkes were passive owners despite being majority shareholders at the club.

Nina Bracewell-Smith and David Dein really messed up the process. Think about it. If we had Abramovich as owner, we'd have never gone through the austerity years. We'd never have been outspent 3-4 times by Chelsea and City. Even Levy and Liverpool owners have been more ambitious and more strategic than us.

The club really cornered Wenger. That's why I feel, for his sake, he should have left after 2011. Not because he wasn't good enough. But his presence allowed us to remain competitive, remain in the UCL, but there was nothing more he could do. He had to generate his own money to spend. He had to manage player departures. He had to work with absolutely nothing. Yet, despite all of this, he kept us relevant.

You can't underresource a manager for years and years and years, and not expect some sort of a setback. Iirc only Real, Bayern, and Barca have been in the UCL for two decades running. I might be wrong because until 16/17, it was only Real.

Look at Real, Barca, and Juve right now. They're afraid of not being able to enjoy the same monopoly due to their debts and lack of finances. That's why they engineered the super league. To remain at the top by finding a shortcut. Perez even moaned about not being able to compete financially with Chelsea, PSG, City, and United.

I'm sure years from now people will appreciate what Wenger achieved with us in the worst of circumstances. It's so easy to pin it on him. He had too much going on for him. He was not only our manager but our DoF as well, and more importantly, he had to ensure that our finances remained healthy. That was what Arsenal wanted.

I don't know why you guys blame him for everything when he gave it his all. He's the reason why Arsenal were the third most valuable club in the world during the early 2010s. He's the reason why we remained competitive.

Not everything is black and white. Chelsea and City would have never won those major honors without their billionaire owners. We were up against those free-spending billionaires, against the richest club in the world in ManU, against a stalwart of the English game in Liverpool, against institutions like Bayern and Barca.

And we did well.

If you look at it rationally and analyze the situation, we overachieved hella lot in those years.

Yes, we underachieved in 15/16. We should have won the League. If Kroenke had only invested his own money in 2015, we wouldn't be seeing this day. We'd have a League title. We wouldn't be mid-table.

Arsenal have spent over £250m since Wenger left. Yet we're on free-fall. It seems no one has a clue there.

We've been a tragic case. Wenger held the fort for as long as he could. I feel really sad seeing some Gooners shit on him when no other manager could have achieved what he did at Arsenal. But that's fine. It's life.

Watching Sky and these pundits pretend that City reaching the UCL final is a fairytale story is nauseating. That's where we are. There's no critical thinking. There's no analytical thinking.

It's disgusting.

Wenger was kept for too long?

Too long for what?

That we finish out of Europe, become a mid-table joke?

10 trophies, 20 years in the UCL, 22 years in Europe, and we kept him past his expiry date? So that we could finish mid-table?

Each passing season reveals how Wenger was papering over the cracks. We're 10th right now. Is that because we kept Wenger for too long?

Invincibles. Two doubles. Most successful manager in FA Cup history. A new stadium. First Arsenal manager to take us to the UCL final.

Too long for what?

Arteta to become Mr Solution?

Give me a break.

You lot cannot get over Wenger. It's as if Wenger owned/owns Arsenal for you folks. It's become a habit: blame Wenger for everything, absolve the owner, absolve the existing manager, current structure.

Yeah, too long. The audacity to disrespect our greatest manager ever when his successors have been nothing but colossal failures. When the owner has no clue how to manage a European club.

You guys should be ashamed of yourselves. The club is at its worst point since before the Wenger years and here we are, blaming Wenger.

Unbelievable.

Iirc you've stated on several occasions that Wenger should've left after he won the FA Cup for the final time.

Yes. He should have. That was a blunder.

What makes me madder is that the club offered him an extension. Why did they do that?

It was reported that Wenger did want to leave but Gazidis asked him to stay in order to put a system in place before his departure. Not sure how true that is. However, it made no sense to offer him a new contract unless Arsenal hierarchy were shit scared of life after him. Gazidis left as soon as he put that structure in place. That's telling.

[DiamondGooner]

There is literally only one reason AFC are in decline and that's our board / Owner.

Wenger's time had expired sure, did he leave a season or two late? sure, but that is not the reason we are 9th and sunk as low as 15th.

We finished what 5th? on Wenger's final year, that is not some mad unrecoverable decline.

What happened is we couldn't get a proper replacement like we needed, the reason for that was clear.
When we were interviewing managers we went for the big guns, Allegri etc, the feed back we got was that managers like that who want to win were not happy with the reply they got from our owner.
That their ideas to buy / replace certain players were rebuffed, Allegri walked away from our offer because it was clear our club would not back him financially to turn the team into a winners.

So our club went for the cheaper options, managers who won't demand a refit of our squad, they gave Emery a try and to be honest it was a mediocre success, finished 6th, had a chance of top 4, got to a final but then it all fell apart and Emery got weird in the 2nd season.

............. so what did they go and do? we hired a guy who's never managed in his life.

Rather than steady the ship with a Rogers or Nuno Gomez, guys who have a plan, experience and manage lesser teams and make them competitive / successful, we went for old Lego head.

That is why we're in decline.

Liverpool went for Klopp, Chelsea went for Tuchel .......... we went for Mikel Arteta.

That is all.

Its not about the players, ask yourself what would Klopp do with players who don't perform? its not that we haven't spent money, ask yourself who is Arteta buying, would Klopp buy those players?

We're fked because Arteta is sht and is mismanaging our system of play, preferring under performing players, buying the wrong players, not having enough authority to get seniors playing for him properly.

[jayramfootball]

There is literally only one reason AFC are in decline and that's our board / Owner.

Wenger's time had expired sure, did he leave a season or two late? sure, but that is not the reason we are 9th and sunk as low as 15th.

We finished what 5th? on Wenger's final year, that is not some mad unrecoverable decline.

What happened is we couldn't get a proper replacement like we needed, the reason for that was clear.
When we were interviewing managers we went for the big guns, Allegri etc, the feed back we got was that managers like that who want to win were not happy with the reply they got from our owner.
That their ideas to buy / replace certain players were rebuffed, Allegri walked away from our offer because it was clear our club would not back him financially to turn the team into a winners.

So our club went for the cheaper options, managers who won't demand a refit of our squad, they gave Emery a try and to be honest it was a mediocre success, finished 6th, had a chance of top 4, got to a final but then it all fell apart and Emery got weird in the 2nd season.

............. so what did they go and do? we hired a guy who's never managed in his life.

Rather than steady the ship with a Rogers or Nuno Gomez, guys who have a plan, experience and manage lesser teams and make them competitive / successful, we went for old Lego head.

That is why we're in decline.

Liverpool went for Klopp, Chelsea went for Tuchel .......... we went for Mikel Arteta.

That is all.

Its not about the players, ask yourself what would Klopp do with players who don't perform? its not that we haven't spent money, ask yourself who is Arteta buying, would Klopp buy those players?

We're fked because Arteta is sht and is mismanaging our system of play, preferring under performing players, buying the wrong players, not having enough authority to get seniors playing for him properly.

The owner should be doing nothing except signing cheques - especially as he has no clue about football.
The reason we are in the position we are is due to poor signings - for years.
The amount of money we have wasted is scandalous.

How much is Kroenke to blame for that? Well maybe to the extent that he signed off on the recruitment of the management staff, but season in season out, it's always been the quality of the players degrading that has put us in this position.

Next year is big for Arteta.
This is his first full season and that needs to be remembered.

If you look at it objectively:
- he's kept us about the same as we were in the league - we certainly weren't headed for anything other than mid table under Emery when he was fired.
- he's won an FA Cup
- He got to a semi final in the EL

Overall not good enough yet , but it's not all bad.

Big transfer window coming up.

[DiamondGooner]

Your wrong from top to bottom.

Firstly "Bad signings" Arteta and Edu are making the signings! Willian anyone?

More importantly what's the point of signings if Arteta forces them to play this pointless possession football at the back? this sideways passing? we can't break down teams because we give them literally 2-3mins to get back into position zonally because we don't know how to sweep the ball forward directly and aggressively.

What you can't grasp is the issue is none of his ideas are his, he's trying to set up a Wenger esque possession team not understanding that the reason Wenger was successful is because he had an uncanny eye to spot technically high players, Cazorla, Ozil, Sanchez, Hleb, Rosicky etc.

These players could pass the ball around because these players knew how to pass to get around and through the oppositions defence, all our players are capable of is passing at the back.

The same results are happening when he tries to copy Pep, the fkin idiot doesn't understand that he doesn't have Cities players, that doesn't even need spelling out of what the difference is.

The man is a fraud, look what Tuchel a good manager has done for Chelsea, look what Rogers has done for Leicester.

Look what Arteta with a better squad than Leciester has done to Arsenal, his system is sht, he doesn't have his own philosophy and if this is his philosophy .......... its sht!!!

[jayramfootball]

Your wrong from top to bottom.

Firstly "Bad signings" Arteta and Edu are making the signings! Willian anyone?

More importantly what's the point of signings if Arteta forces them to play this pointless possession football at the back? this sideways passing? we can't break down teams because we give them literally 2-3mins to get back into position zonally because we don't know how to sweep the ball forward directly and aggressively.

What you can't grasp is the issue is none of his ideas are his, he's trying to set up a Wenger esque possession team not understanding that the reason Wenger was successful is because he had an uncanny eye to spot technically high players, Cazorla, Ozil, Sanchez, Hleb, Rosicky etc.

These players could pass the ball around because these players knew how to pass to get around and through the oppositions defence, all our players are capable of is passing at the back.

The same results are happening when he tries to copy Pep, the fkin idiot doesn't understand that he doesn't have Cities players, that doesn't even need spelling out of what the difference is.

The man is a fraud, look what Tuchel a good manager has done for Chelsea, look what Rogers has done for Leicester.

Look what Arteta with a better squad than Leciester has done to Arsenal, his system is sht, he doesn't have his own philosophy and if this is his philosophy .......... its sht!!!

We all know about the mistakes.
There are multiple reasons we're in this position, which is not as bad as you are making out.
Whether we like it or not we're a club in transition and still trying to find the route forward.

I am taking the positives
An FA Cup win, a better defence than we had and young players developing.
It's going to take years to fully fix and I simply don't buy that some magical manager is going to come along and wave a magic wand.

The comparison to Chelsea is apples and oranges.
They were nowhere near in the position we are squad wise.

[EliteKiller]

There is literally only one reason AFC are in decline and that's our board / Owner.

So name all the clubs with good owners above us? .... your argument is fundamentally flawed.

[DiamondGooner]

There is literally only one reason AFC are in decline and that's our board / Owner.

So name all the clubs with good owners above us? .... your argument is fundamentally flawed.

Leciester hired Rogers, Liverpool hired and funded Klopp, Chelsea hired Tuchel with immediate returns, City hired and funded Pep.

Even West Hams decision to hire Moyes has paid off big time, but again I'm no fan of Moyes but he's obviously been married to a club of his level successfully.

We could of got Ancelloti (again not a fan) but we opted for a guy who's never managed before.

.............. now look where we are and look where all of them are.

Question answered.

Also when I say "good owners" I'm specifically talking about the hiring of managers here, nothing else, the owners hire and fire managers, they also have the say on when enough is enough, Kroenke couldn't woo or know a good manager if it smacked him on the tache.

[DiamondGooner]

We all know about the mistakes.
There are multiple reasons we're in this position, which is not as bad as you are making out.
Whether we like it or not we're a club in transition and still trying to find the route forward.

I am taking the positives
An FA Cup win, a better defence than we had and young players developing.
It's going to take years to fully fix and I simply don't buy that some magical manager is going to come along and wave a magic wand.

The comparison to Chelsea is apples and oranges.
They were nowhere near in the position we are squad wise.

I don't actually care what you think because your credibility has become bankrupt.

I know what you're doing and I've seen you do this before, you find a difficult cause so your backed into a corner and can practice trying to fight your way out of a paper bag and WUM everyone.

Its sad and pathetic, you didn't even like Arteta till the Villarreal game, your so obvious its corney.

We don't need a "magical manager" we just need a fkin good one, like any bloody team who wants to be successful, why has Klopp made such a difference to Liverpool? how did Wenger make such a difference to Arsenal back in the day ............ Fergie?

The manager controls the players, he chooses the players, he tells them how to play, he can get rid of bad players and bring in good ones, I'm saying all of the above are our problems, especially how we play.

Did that really need to be stated?

Take up one more silly position with me and consider us done, I'll ignore you until your sanity returns.